Coolgrange House Stud is a stud farm in Coolgrange Co. Kilkenny. The Stud Farm is owned and run by longtime successful horse breeder Tommy Brennan. Legendary Irish stallion ‘Furisto’ stood here from 1991 to 1997 and the farm also has an impressive progeny. In 2009 Coolgrange House Stud was responsible for no less than four horses competing in that year’s badminton horse trials.

Header: The site’s large header was based on a jQuery image rotation enabling new photos to be added to the rotation without redeveloping the entire rotation as would be the case if using ‘Flash’. The rotation is kept full height throughout the site so as to avoid having to crop a photo of one of the animals. A masthead was created using a horseshoe image and some typography to the right of this so as to optimise vertical position and also to allow keeping the natural aspect ratio of the photographs as they would come off a camera, otherwise a narrow format website would have been necessary.

Functionality: Coolgrange’s primary functionality need was for a special system within the website which would display horse information for the sections of: stallions, progeny and horses for sale. This information centered mainly on the animal’s pedigree which, in the case of stallions, needed to go back 3 generations. A main photo and a provision for some thumbnails plus general information about the horse is also provided for. These and other photos throughout the site expand using ‘Shadowbox’ enabling pleasant viewing and the ability to flick though sets of photos. All this was built into a table system which the owners could change themselves as required.